The fight
against the enemy nearest to you has precedence over the fight
against the enemy farther away. . . . In all Muslim countries the enemy has
the reins of power. The enemy is the present rulers.
 Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj,
tried and hanged in connection with the
1981 assassination of Anwar al-Sadat1

We do not want
stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi
Arabia. . . . The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize. We have
to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution.
 Michael Ledeen,
American Enterprise Institute, 20023

The leader of Sadats assassins, Bin Ladens chief
ideologue, and a leading American neoconservative supporter of Israel all call for a
revolutionary transformation of the Middle East. However, the United States, the existing
Arab regimes, and the traditional Sunni clerical establishments all share an interest in
avoiding instability and revolution. This shared interest makes the establishments in the
Sunni world Americas natural partners in the struggle against al Qaeda and similar
movements. If American strategists fail to understand and exploit the divide between the
establishments and the revolutionaries within Sunni Islam, the United States will play
into the radicals hands, and turn fence-sitting Sunnis into enemies.

69/70

Outsiders of
the Sunni World

Sunni Islam is a
very big tent, and there always have been insiders and outsiders within Sunnism playing
out their rivalries with clashing philosophies.4 Throughout
the past century, the most important of these clashes have occurred between Sunni
reformers and the traditional Sunni clerical establishment. The ideology espoused today by
al Qaeda and similar groups can be traced directly from the 19th-century founders of
modernist reform in Sunnism. Al Qaedas leading thinkers are steeped in these
reformers long struggle against the establishment. The teaching of the reformers has
been heterodox and revolutionary from the beginning; that is, the reformers and their
intellectual descendants in al Qaeda are the outsiders of todays Sunni world.

For the most part
this struggle has been waged in Egypt, Sunni Islams center of gravity. On one side
of the debate, there is Cairos Al-Azhar, a seminary and university that has been the
center of Sunni orthodoxy for a thousand years. On the other side, al Qaedas
ideology has its origins in late-19th-century efforts in Egypt to reform and modernize
faith and society. As the 20th century progressed, the Sunni establishment centered on
Al-Azhar came to view the modernist reform movement as more and more heterodox. It became
known as Salafism, for the supposedly uncorrupted early Muslim predecessors (salaf,
plural aslaf ) of todays Islam. The more revolutionary tendencies in this
Salafist reform movement constitute the core of todays challenge to the Sunni
establishment, and are the chief font of al Qaedas ideology.

A Century of
Reformation

In contemporary
Western discussions of the Muslim world, it is common to hear calls for a
reformation in Islam as an antidote to al Qaeda.5
These calls often betray a misunderstanding of both Sunni Islam and of the early modern
debate between Catholics and Protestants. In fact, a Sunni reformation has
been under way for more than a century, and it works against Western security interests.
The Catholic-Protestant struggle in Europe weakened traditional religious
authorities control over the definition of doctrine, emphasized scripture over
tradition, idealized an allegedly uncorrupted primitive religious community, and
simplified theology and rites. The Salafist movement in the Sunni Muslim world has been
pursuing these same reforms for a century.

70/71

More important, the
contemporary pundits calls for a reformation in Islam carry with them an
implication that the traditional Sunni clerical elite is the ideological basis for al
Qaeda, and that weakening the traditional clerical establishments hold on the minds
of pious Sunnis would promote stability. In fact, the opposite is clearly the case in most
of the Sunni world. The mutual condemnations that the establishment and Salafist camps
have exchanged over the past century, not to mention the blood shed by both sides, make
this clear.

Even in Saudi
Arabia, which is exceptional because the religious establishment there is itself Salafist,
there is a split between a pro-establishment Salafist camp and the revolutionary
Salafists. The Saudi regime and its establishment Salafist allies have asserted themselves
against revolutionary Salafist tendencies repeatedly since the 1920s, and are belatedly
doing so again now.

The revolutionary
Salafists are outsiders. Their movement, from its origins a century ago until today, has
been at odds with the Sunni establishment. By tracing the movements ideological
development over the past century, it becomes clear why al Qaedas leaders have
chosen their present strategy: the experience of their movement drives them to view their
opponents within Sunni Islamthe near enemyas a more important
target than non-Muslimsthe far enemy.

Theology and
Politics: Ibn Taymiyya

The medieval Sunni
scholar Taqi ad-Din Ahmed ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) is an important reference for
todays revolutionary Salafists. Ibn Taymiyya needed an argument that would rally
Muslims behind the Mamluke rulers of Egypt in their struggle against the advancing Mongols
from 1294 to 1303. Some objected that there could be no jihad against the Mongols because
they and their king had recently converted to Islam. Ibn Taymiyya reasoned that because
the Mongol ruler permitted some aspects of Mongol tribal law to persist alongside the
Islamic sharia code, the Mongols were apostates to Islam and therefore legitimate
targets of jihad. Todays revolutionary Salafists cite Ibn Taymiyya as an authority
for their argument that contemporary Muslim rulers are apostates if they fail to impose sharia
exclusively, and that jihad should be waged against them.

Although Ibn
Taymiyyas medieval theology is important to the contemporary Salafists, Salafism had
its true origins in modern times, in the reform movement at Sunni Islams Egyptian
core in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This reform movement arose out of the
reaction of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire to the growing dominance of the West in
international politics, in science, and in culture. Napoleons occupation of Egypt,
the French colonization of North Africa, and Britains domination of Muslims in India

71/72

and later Egypt all
dealt profound shocks to a Muslim world that had, until the 18th century, confidently
regarded itself as superior to the West.

Muslim
Rationalist: Al-Afghani

Jamal ad-Din
Al-Afghani (1839-1897) launched this modernizing reform movement in Islam, one strain of
which developed later into the revolutionary Salafism the United States confronts today.
Chiefly through his preaching and pupils in Cairo, Al-Afghani spread the idea that Muslim
defeats at the hands of the West were due to the corruption of Islam. Al-Afghani admired
Western rationalism, and saw it as the source of the Wests material strength. Rather
than advocating secularization, however, Al-Afghani taught that rationalism was the core
of an uncorrupted true Islam, the Islam supposedly practiced during the golden
age of Muhammad and his first few successors. Al-Afghani believed that if this spiritual
revival of Muslim society were accomplished, the Muslim world would soon develop the
intellectual equipment it needed to redress the Wests technological and military
advantages.6

Al-Afghanis
teachings flew in the face of conventional wisdom in both the Muslim world and the West.
Most Ottoman reformers who contemplated the disparities between Western and Eastern power
concluded that the Ottoman Empire needed to adopt the science of the West, and set aside
much of the thought of the East, a tendency that culminated in Attaturks radical
secularism.

Al-Afghani, on the
other hand, diagnosed the Muslim worlds problem as theological at root, and
prescribed as an antidote religious revival. Al-Afghani also taught that political
struggle, even revolt, was sometimes justified.

Al-Afghanis
attempts to identify Western rationalism with primitive Islam, as well as his teaching on
rebellion, brought condemnation from the Sunni clerical establishment. He failed to win a
popular following for his ideas, and he was deported from Egypt by the pro-British regime
of the Khedive Tawfiq.7 But Al-Afghanis students had a lasting impact on the next
generation of Muslim thinkers.

Sunni
Reformers: Abduh and Ridha

Al-Afghanis
leading student was Muhammed Abduh (1849-1905.) He rose to become Grand Mufti of
Egypt, making him the only prominent Salafist to have made a career among the clerical
elite. Abduh was a modernist: like Al-Afghani, he contended that Islam, properly
understood, was compatible with the rationalism of modern Europe. This proper
understanding could be found in the supposedly pure religion practiced during the first
few generations of Islam. Abduh coined the term salafiah to describe his
teachings. Importantly, Abduh also taught that private judgment (ijtihad) was
a

72/73

valid means by which
contemporary believers could understand true Islam in a modern light.8

Abduhs
followers took his ideas in two divergent directions after his death. Some used his
teachings to advocate secularization in the Muslim world. They had much impact over the
next 50 years, blunting Muslim resistance to Arab socialism and nationalism, but the logic
of their views led many of them into outright secularism, taking them out of the debate
among Sunni believers.9

The other current of
Abduhs followers used many of his reforming ideas to move down the path that
led to todays al Qaeda. Abduhs pupil and biographer, Mohammed Rashid
Ridha (1865-1935) emphasized his masters teachings on the idea of a pure Islam of
the aslaf, and on the idea that individuals and societies that adhere to
true Islam will prosper in this world.

This was an
especially attractive promise to Muslims living under European occupations. Ridhas
circle viewed the early Muslims conquests as Gods reward for their pious
obedience. If only Islam could be cleansed of its medieval encroachments and (in
Ridhas version) the errors of both modern Westernizing philosophers and of Shias,
then political success would follow. Ridha believed the establishment clergy incapable of
leading the reform movement he desired.10

Al-Banna and
the Muslim Brothers

The Egyptian Hassan
Al-Banna (1906-1949) studied with Ridhas circle as a young man, and in 1928 he
launched in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood, the first modern Islamic political movement.
Al-Banna sought to unite and mobilize Muslims against the cultural and political
domination of the West. However, the Brotherhood eventually reached an understanding with
the regime of King Faruq, which saw the Brothers as a useful counter to nationalist
movements. As a result, revolutionaries among the Salafists began to feel less and less
comfortable with the Brotherhood.

Just as these
differences within the Brotherhood were coming to the surface, Gamal Abdel Nasser and
other military officers overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in 1952. The new socialist and
nationalist military regime suppressed the Brotherhood in 1954, claiming it had plotted to
assassinate Nasser.

Reform
Movements beyond Sunnisms Core

Meanwhile, other
Sunni Muslim reform movements beyond Sunnisms Egyptian core were maturing
independently of the Salafists. Wahabism, a puritanical Sunni sect, first arose in the
1700s, but remained confined to the sparsely populated deserts of the Arabian Peninsula.
In 1816, Sunnisms orthodox core, in the form of an Egyptian army acting in the name
of the Ottoman

73/74

Sultan, reached out
to Arabia to destroy the first Wahabi state. Ridha, early in his career, condemned the
Wahabis as heretical, as did all mainstream Sunnis. But Ridha gradually came to sympathize
with the Arabian dissenters.11 Wahabi influence throughout the Sunni world grew as oil wealth fed
Saudi power in the 1960s and 1970s.

Like Wahabism, the
Deobandi and Barelvi movements of South Asia developed independently of the reformers at
Sunnisms Egyptian core. The Deobandis and Barelvis attempted to address the problems
of South Asian Sunni Muslims who went from being the ruling minority of the Mughal Empire
to living after 1857 under direct British rule as a minority among South Asias
Hindus. Their solution was to call on believers to exclude non-Muslim influences from
their lives, build purely Muslim institutions, and strive to live a wholly Islamic
life, as understood by the movements scholars. It was not until the 1960s that these
South Asian currents influenced the revolutionary Salafists, through the writings of
Pakistani cleric Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979)12 and their impact on another Egyptian outsider, Sayyid Qutb.

Sayyid Qutb

Qutb (1906-1966),
the next bearer of the revolutionary Salafist flame, was an educator and member of the
Muslim Brotherhood. Qutb warned against the Westernizing influences that continued to
permeate the Muslim world during the 1940s and 1950s. He had no formal theological
training, but, hearkening back to Abduh and Ridha, believed it the duty of the
ordinary believer to seek out the supposedly pure Islam of the aslaf.13 Expanding on Ibn Taymiyyas teaching on jihad
against apostate rulers, Qutb argued for struggle against the secular regimes of the
Muslim world, even if this meant killing Muslims. Qutb was also influenced by
Mawdudis call on individual Muslims to exclude non-Muslim influences from their
lives and institutions. Qutbs endorsement of Mawdudi began a convergence between the
revolutionary Salafists and the South Asian movements.14 The Nasser regime hanged Qutb in 1966.15

Nassers
secular agenda, his socialism, and his spectacular defeat in the 1967 war generated
opposition to his regime and disillusionment with secularism in general. Some of this
opposition flowed into the ranks of the underground Islamic political movements. The
Muslim Brotherhood had by this time split with the revolutionary Salafist movements over
the Salafists calls for overturning Muslim states and societies. The Brotherhood
became the most significant Islamic political opposition to Nasserism. However, the
revolutionary Salafists, who viewed Qutb as a visionary martyr, gained adherents as well.
Thousands from both movements languished in Egyptian prisons.

After Nassers
death in 1970, his successor, Anwar al-Sadat, attempted to co-opt both traditional Islam
and political Islam as counters to the

74/75

political left. The
Sadat regime at first tolerated the growth of a Salafist campus movement calling itself
Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya (the Islamic Group), but the Jamaa began to turn on Sadat when he
backed away from his earlier promise to impose sharia law. Around the same time, a
more radical faction splintered from the Jamaa, calling itself simply Jihad. Sadat
suppressed both groups in the late 1970s.

During the 1970s,
one of those who spread Qutbs message and updated his strategy was Muhammad Abd
al-Salam Faraj, an electrician and self-taught theologian for the underground Jihad in
Egypt. Tried as a leader of the conspiracy that assassinated Sadat in 1981, Faraj used the
proceedings to present his manifesto, The Neglected Duty. Along with theological
arguments justifying violence, The Neglected Duty echoes Qutb on the need for a
strategy that attacks the near enemyapostate Muslim regimesbefore
the far enemy meaning Israel, the United States, and other Western
powers interfering in the Muslim world.16 Faraj also accused the Muslim Brothers
and the establishment Egyptian clergy of collaborating with the secular Egyptian regime. The
Neglected Duty was widely read throughout Egypt and the Muslim world.

Mustafa,
Zawahiri, and Bin Laden

After Sadats
assassination and the ensuing crackdown on both the Muslim Brothers and the revolutionary
Salafists in Egypt, some Salafists gravitated to a sect headed by an engineer named Shukri
Mustafa. Mustafas group, building on Qutbs writings, preached the
denunciation as unbelievers (takfir) of almost all of society, and
separation from it. The traditional religious establishment of Al-Azhar denounced these
takfiris as heretics. Mustafa was hanged in 1977 for the kidnapping and murder
of a senior Al-Azhar cleric.17

The guerilla war
against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 was the incubator for the
contemporary stage in the development of revolutionary Salafist doctrine and strategy.
Many Arab volunteers in Afghanistan coalesced around revolutionary Salafists who remained
outsiders to the Sunni clerical establishment, even as some of the Arab regimes, and the
United States, funded them. Many Arabs in Afghanistan came under the influence of the
Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri, a prolific writer whom many found persuasive, but
who, like all the revolutionary Salafists, was condemned by the Al-Azhar clerical
establishment.

Zawahiri claims to
have known Faraj personally; the doctor eventually became a leader of one of the Egyptian
Jihad groups.18 Zawahiri met Osama bin Laden in Peshawar,
Pakistan, during the guerilla campaign against the Soviets. The two collaborated closely,
Zawahiri contributing his skills as an ideologist, Bin Laden his organizational talents
and financial resources. The

75/76

two publicly announced the merger of their
groups in 1998, completing al Qaedas development into the group that challenges the
United States today.

Al Qaeda
Strategy Today

Zawahiri remains Bin
Ladens deputy as leader of al Qaeda, and the Egyptian doctors writings provide
the best insight into the terrorist organizations current strategic thinking. In his
2001 book Knights Under the Prophets Banner, Zawahiri identifies and
prioritizes the goals of what he calls the the revolutionary fundamentalist
movement: first, achievement of ideological coherence and organization, then
struggle against the existing regimes of the Muslim world, followed by the establishment
of a genuinely Muslim state at the heart of Arab world.19 Zawahiri views the current stage of the jihad as one of
worldwide, revolutionary struggle, to be waged by means of violence, political action, and
propaganda against the secular Muslim regimes and secularized Muslim elites.20
Zawahiri argues that because the terrain in the key Arab countries is not suitable for
guerilla war, Islamists need to conduct political action among the masses, combined with
an urban terrorist campaign against the secular regimes, supplemented with attacks on
the external enemyi.e., the United States and Israelas a means of
propaganda that will strengthen the jihads popular support.

Zawahiri wants his
Salafist readers to keep in mind that the Arab establishments are the real targets, even
if confining the battle to the domestic enemy . . . will not be feasible in this
stage of the battle.21 Highly visible attacks against external enemies, and the
inevitable retaliation, Zawahiri explains, will rally ordinary Muslims to the
radicals cause, strengthening the main struggle, the one against the current regimes
of the Muslim world. As Zawahiri writes in Knights:

The jihad movement
must . . . make room for the Muslim nation to participate with it in the jihad for the
sake of empowerment. The Muslim nation will not participate with [the jihad movement]
unless the slogans of the mujahidin are understood by the masses. . . . The one slogan
that has been well understood by the nation and to which it has been responding for the
past 50 years is the call for jihad against Israel. In addition to this slogan, the
[Muslim] nation in [the 1990s] is geared against the US presence. [The Muslim nation] has
responded favorably to the call for the jihad against the Americans. . . . [T]he jihad
movement moved to the center of the leadership of the [Muslim] nation when it adopted the
slogan of liberating the nation from its external enemies. . . . [Striking at the United
States would force the Americans to] personally wage the battle against the Muslims, which
means that the battle will turn into a clear-cut jihad against infidels.22

This passage shows
that the revolutionary Salafists do not expect to actually defeat America or its allies
(whatever al Qaeda propaganda may

76/77

claim). Instead,
spectacular terrorist attacks are a means toward the end of changing the character of the
conflict, changing it from a campaign waged by a small faction of extremists against the
regimes of Muslim world, into a clear-cut jihad against infidels, which would,
the Salafists hope, attract wide support among the Muslim masses.23

Zawahiri views the
current phase of the jihad as a revolutionary war, and the ideological component of the
struggle is thus very important. Like Mao24 and the North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap,25 Zawahiri considers political and propaganda action to be
just as important at some stages as military efforts are. The jihad must dedicate
one of its wings to work with the masses, preach, provide services. . . . [T]he people
will not love us unless they feel that we love them, care about them, and are ready to
defend them.26 This last pointconvincing the
people that the revolutionary Salafists are ready to defend themagain
illustrates how Zawahiri sees high-profile terrorist strikes against the external enemy as
a means of making propaganda for the Muslim masses. He calls on his followers, at this
stage of the struggle, to launch a battle for orienting the [Muslim] nation by
striking at the United States and Israel.27 Thus, al
Qaedas immediate goal is not to destroy Israel or even drive the United States out
of the Middle East; rather, it is to orient the nation.

Overcoming
Class Conflicts

For all the
importance that Zawahiri attaches to political action and organization among the masses,
the revolutionary Salafists have aroused, at least up until the US invasion of Iraq,
little popular response to their efforts.

In his 2002 book Jihad:
The Trail of Political Islam, Gilles Kepel argues convincingly that contemporary
political Islamist movements can succeed only when they are able to mobilize, and maintain
an alliance between, the masses and the pious middle classes. Natural tensions between the
two constituencies are inherently difficult to control and are repeatedly the downfall of
contemporary political Islamist movements, most notably in Algeria. Kepel points out that
the Ayatollah Khomeini was the only really successful leader of a movement that harnessed
both lower- and middle-class energies long enough to achieve power. This may have had much
to do with factors unique to Shia Islam (such as the believers obligation to choose
and support financially a spiritual mentor) that are not available to would-be Sunni
revolutionaries.

Kepel goes on to
argue that the closest thing so far to a Khomeini-style success in the Sunni Arab world
was the rise and fall of the Algerian Front Islamique du Salut (FIS). The FIS convinced
the pious middle classes that it was nonviolent and did not threaten stability, while
showing a sufficiently revolutionary face to Algerias masses of alienated young men
to mobilize them.

77/78

The result was a
series of FIS electoral successes that would have resulted in a democratically elected FIS
regime had the Algerian military not intervened in 1992. When the FIS was unable to
control the rage of its underclass supporters over the coup, and violence erupted, the
pious middle classes largely deserted the movement, leading to its collapse.28

Similarly,
Egypts revolutionary Salafists have been discredited by their violence, especially
the Luxor massacre of 1997, when the Jamaa slaughtered 60 foreign tourists. This and other
outrages sickened many Egyptians who might otherwise have given the Islamists a hearing.
This revulsion, as much as the regimes ruthless crackdown, so weakened the Jamaa
that by 1999 its imprisoned leaders had publicly declared a unilateral cease-fire.29

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is
exceptional, as mentioned earlier, because Salafism there is a doctrine of the insiders,
the clerical establishment. However, even in Saudi Arabia, the centuries-old partnership
between the Al-Saud dynasty and the Wahabi clerical establishment gives the establishment
Salafist clerics an important interest in suppressing the revolutionary strain of
Salafism. Quintan Wiktorowicz and John Kaltner describe this split between violent and
nonviolent Salafists, noting the prominence in the latter group of leaders with
Ph.D.s from Saudi universities.30

Both the
establishment Wahabi clerics and the Al-Saud have sometimes failed in their efforts to
keep the revolutionary Salafists out of Saudi Arabias establishment clergy, and
until 2001 actually connived in establishing them outside the kingdom. Since 11 September
2001 and the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh, the Saudi regime has worked, with mixed success,
to suppress its revolutionary Salafists.

Strategic
Implications for the United States

Almost all of the
thinkers who shaped al Qaedas ideology were outsiders. Al-Afghani, Ridha, Al-Banna,
Qutb, Faraj, and Zawahiri all battled the clerical and government establishments of their
time. Only Abduh penetrated the clerical establishment (and he probably would
condemn the violent factions of todays Salafists). Like their intellectual forbears,
al Qaeda and todays other Salafist revolutionaries remain outsiders, locked in a
century-long philosophical struggle with the traditional Sunni clerical elite, and engaged
in political struggle with Arab regimes. The revolutionary Salafists fight because they
want power, and because they hate the secularism and corruption they associate with the
current Sunni Muslim regimes. (The regimes undemocratic nature has not been an
important motive for the Salafists over the years.)

78/79

The revolutionaries
have failed so far to mobilize and unite the masses and pious middle classes of most Arab
countries. They no longer enjoy the overt support of any government on the planet, having
lost their state in Afghanistan, been defeated in Algeria, and fallen out of favor with
their erstwhile allies in Sudans military regime.

The Salafists
current strategy, as Zawahiri described, is to provoke, on an international scale, a cycle
of violence and repression that will mobilize the Sunni masses. The American invasion of
Afghanistan failed to bring about this mobilization. However, the invasion and occupation
of Iraq, combined with US support of Israels policies in the occupied territories,
may at last be triggering the radicalization of the masses and middle classes of the Arab
world that al Qaeda has hoped for.

Sunni Islams
most active reformers over the past century have been its outsiders, the Salafists. It is
the insiders of Sunni Islam who are Americas natural allies. Western advocates of
reformation understandably want to see the existing secular, Westernized
classes in Muslim countries gain the upper hand. But these politically weak classes are
small elites viewed with suspicion by both the masses and the regimes. Any American effort
to strengthen these elites must be a project for several decades, to be carried out
quietly and with the greatest caution. The United States would gain little if more among
the Muslim masses came to regard Muslim liberals as agents of the global hegemon, bent on
depriving Islam of its capacity to resist a Western culture that most view as morally
depraved.

The United States
should instead exploit its ties to the existing regimes of the Sunni world in order to
combat jointly the revolutionary Salafists. The US struggle against al Qaeda and similar
groups will be chiefly a matter of intelligence and police work, with perhaps a role for
special forces working with local partners in ungoverned areas. Only the existing Muslim
regimes, in coordination with American investigators and spies, can defeat the cells of al
Qaeda and similar groups moving among the Sunni worlds masses. The United States
needs to support and to engage with these undemocratic regimes even more closely if US
security services are to be granted the liaison relationships with local authorities that
are essential to the real war against terrorism. Washington should set aside, for now, its
ambitions for democratic revolution in the region, at least until the Salafist revolution
is contained.

Similarly, the
United States must avoid positioning itself as the foe of the traditional Sunni clerical
establishments, or provoking some of them into sympathy with their erstwhile foes, the
revolutionary Salafists. If mainstream Sunnis come to view the United States as bent on a
campaign to weaken or remake traditional Muslim culture, then more and more mainstream
Sunni believers will conclude that the revolutionary Salafists they

79/80

once reviled were
right all along. At that point the world really would see the clash of civilizations
sought by both al Qaeda and some US pundits.

NOTES

1. Muhammad Abd
Al-Salam Faraj, The Neglected Duty, sections 68-70, trans. in Johannes J. G.
Jansen, The Neglected Duty: The Creed of Sadats Assassins and Islamic Resurgence
in the Middle East (New York: Macmillan, 1986), p. 192. The title of Farajs book
is also sometimes translated as The Forgotten Obligation.

4. The Sunni-Shia
split had its origins in the seventh century. Shiism is at least as diverse as Sunnism,
but is beyond the scope of this essay because al Qaeda is a militantly Sunni movement with
no appeal in the Shia world.

5. For example,
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said We need an Islamic reformation, and
I think there is real hope for one. Quoted in David Ignatius, The Read on
Wolfowitz, The Washington Post, 17 January 2003, p. A23.

10. Hourani, p. 228.
For a mainstream Sunni criticism of Ridha, see Answer to an Enemy of Islam
(Istanbul: Waqf Ikhlas Publications, 1993).

11. Perhaps this was
because Ridha realized that he himself was moving outside the Sunni mainstream, or perhaps
he was impressed by the political success of the Wahabis patron, Ibn Saud, who
reestablished the Saudi state in 1902 and conquered Mecca and Medina in 1924-25.

13. In the Shade
of the Quran is Qutbs exegesis on the Quran, written while in prison.

14. One Salafist
admirer of Qutb, the Palestinian-born, Egyptian-educated Abdullah Azzam (1941-1989),
obtained a professorship at a Saudi university in the 1970s, where his students included
Osama bin Laden. Azzam played an important role in the convergence of Egypt-based
revolutionary Salafism and Saudi revolutionary Wahabism.

15. Robert Siegel,
Sayyid Qutbs America, National Public Radio, 6 May 2003,
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1253796.html. Like many of the
revolutionary Salafists to follow him, Qutb appears to have been radicalized partly by a
direct encounter with the West. Sent to study at the University of Northern Colorado in
the 1940s by the government of King Faruq, Qutb wrote later of the sexual decadence and
secularized religion of the United States.

16. Faraj (in
Jansen), sections 68-70.

17. Kepel, p. 85.
The establishment compared the Takfiris to the Kharijites of the seventh century, who are
universally reviled by mainstream Sunnis for failing to respect the consensus of believers
and for denouncing fellow Muslims as unbelievers.

18. Zawahiri, p. 74.

19. Ibid., p. 80.
Egypt particularly.

20. Ibid., pp.
72-73.

21. Ibid., p. 71

22. Ibid., pp.75,
78.

23. It is a strategy
analogous to the failed attempts of European leftist terrorists in the 1970s to set off a
revolution with terrorist attacks aimed at provoking indiscriminate government crackdowns.

30. Quintan
Wiktorowicz and John Kaltner, Killing in the Name of Islam: Al-Qaedas
Justification for September 11, Middle East Policy,10 (Summer 2003), 76.

Christopher Henzel is a Foreign
Service officer and a 2004 graduate of the National War College. This article is drawn
from his course work there. As is the case with all articles in Parameters, the
views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the
authors department or any US government agency.